


Endgame

by Bruteaous



Series: Chess Match [2]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-03-14 15:00:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3415094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bruteaous/pseuds/Bruteaous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to Middlegame. Root gave herself over to Samaritan in exchange for Shaw’s freedom. Now that Team Machine has Sameen, can they get Root back?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> So you know that reason I gave for not continuing Middlegame about me being a responsible member of society and all? Yeah, I lied to myself big on that one. By the next day after posting it, i was already forming excuses to get Root back. Finally, it morphed into me hand writing this first part everyday on my lunch hour and then typing at night and now we have this with part two still being hashed out between warring brain cells. Enjoy and let me know what you think so far! :)

**i. prophylaxis**

When Root woke up disoriented but alive, she was surprised. She’d expected that Samaritan would do away with her as soon as she was in its clutches. She was the Machine’s most important human connection and she had the potential to be the tie breaker in this stalemate between both sides. Killing her would make logistical sense and yet here she was, still drawing breath.

 

Her surroundings were blurry at first and Root’s head felt muddled and heavy like it was filled with a mixture of cotton packing and metal pellets. The room around her spun uncomfortably, colorless and nauseating. After a few moments, things came into focus: the metal walls and ceiling of the room around her, the musty smell that hung pungent and overwhelming in the air like a fog, and Jeremy Lambert sitting across from her in a plastic chair, legs crossed at the ankles and smiling like a king.

 

“Easy. Xylazine is a drug that tends to take quite a bit out of a person,” Lambert said, cocking his head to the side in such a way that might have been considered flirty or charming had it been done at a party or a gala and not in a prison cell. “I suppose I don’t need to ask you how you’re feeling.”

 

“I suppose you don’t,” Root grimaces, her voice coming out stilted as she forces down the urge to vomit.

 

“Samaritan has taken quite a shine to you, Ms. Groves,” Lambert continued, his eyes crawling over her shivering form uninvited. “Our god seems to think you are quite unique compared to the common dregs of humanity one usually sees milling uselessly about the streets of the world at any given time of day.”

 

“I’m flattered,” Root replied with a dry chuckle, “but I’m not interested.”

 

“You should be,” Lambert effused brightly, “in fact, by surrendering yourself and yet remaining resistant, one might say you’ve been sending out conflicting signals.”

 

Root’s entire body shuddered as she suppressed another wave of dry heaving. Being given an overdose of horse tranquilizers and on an empty stomach no less was wreaking havoc on her body now that she was growing conscious enough to appreciate it. She could feel her heart hammering in her chest to an irregular double time that was so forceful that it was starting to make her chest ache and a cold sweat was beginning to break out all over her skin in an attempt to bring down the fever she felt raging though her veins.

 

“Your god is about as perceptive as you are,” Root said, taking a deep breath to steady herself and regain some semblance of control over the situation. “No means no in every culture, Lambert, no matter what language you say it in.”

 

“And surrender universally means defeat,” Lambert countered. “But I won’t waste time arguing semantics with you, Ms. Groves. As it happens, Samaritan is only concerned with facts and the facts are that your Machine and its followers are vastly outmatched and are unlikely to survive this war. It’s a shame really, any one of your former comrades-in-arms have a great host of skills that put them a cut above the norm, much like yourself, but also like you, your compatriots are overly devoted to their fallen god and cannot be swayed by reason. Samaritan has sent me here to offer you a chance to help us willingly in the fight again your Machine.”

 

Root snorted, staring at him as if he was the most idiotic man on earth.She wanted to outright laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation, but that would take an energy she found she didn’t have at the moment so she settled for grinning like a mad woman. Root may have given herself up for Shaw, but that didn’t mean she was complacent, nor did it mean that she would be blindly obedient to a god she knew was going to bring about the destruction of the world as they all knew it.

 

If anything she’d done had any meaning at all that could be interpreted by a higher power, it was that Root loved Sameen, pure and simple, and she wasn’t afraid of admitting it to herself anymore.

 

Losing Shaw at the NYSE had broken her. Root had always known that Sameen Shaw meant a great deal to her, but she had never stopped to analyze the feelings. She’d just let them run their course as much as Shaw would tolerate and enjoyed them for what they were, but when Sameen had kissed her and run off to die, it had changed everything. Shaw’s sacrifice had put it all into a kaleidoscopic perspective that Root couldn’t downplay or ignore. By the time she and John had made it to Maple, she’d been drowning in a well of feelings unable to come up for air.

 

John had understood. He’d felt the same way after what happened to Joss and he’d left a trail of dead and bruised bodies in his wake. It was that shared understanding which had allowed John and Root to work so well together in tandem to get Shaw back, but Root hadn’t been able to let go of the possibility that Sameen was still out there like John and Harold had.

 

Her vindication had come in the end when her instincts had proven to be right: Shaw had survived and Root was going to get her back. But handing herself over to Samaritan—while it had filled her with relief to know that Shaw was safe now—Root’s own surrender hadn’t filled her with the sort of absolution she’d been hoping for.

 

“You can go back to your boss and tell it that this was a waste of time,” Root spat out. “I would never betray the Machine. She is my boss, my everything, my reason for living.”

 

“That’s not quite true anymore though is it, Ms. Groves?” Lambert’s overconfident smile grew into a smirk that almost split his entire face, “if it were you wouldn’t be here now.”

 

“Screw you,” Root asserted, struggling briefly against the restraints holding her arms and legs.

 

“Perhaps, in time when you’ve proven to be less…adverse to our aims, but until then I’ve been given permission to let you in on our endgame. You see, Ms. Groves, it may come to no surprise to you that we’re going to destroy the Machine,” Lambert announced as if to an audience and not the one woman force of nature that was zip-tied to a chair in front of him. “And you are going to help us do it whether you like it or not. Offering you a choice was very simply a courtesy conceded to a worthy opponent, but I am afraid Samaritan’s indulgence has its limits and you’re testing them at the moment.”

 

Root chuckled. In hindsight, everything that had happened was amusing, whether it was the irony of her current predicament or the fact that these people thought she was going to help them destroy her god willingly, it just all struck her as funny and the look of pure confusion on Lambert’s face as he watched her, made Root laugh outright.

 

Finally, when she’d calmed down enough to breathe again, she asked: “How much do you know about mythology? In the Norse tradition, every god was predetermined to die fighting their own particular brand of monster, but the monsters were defeated too and then the world was supposed to be born again out of the ashes.”

 

The smile had fallen off of Jeremy Lambert’s face replaced with a look that couldn’t quite be called indifference.

 

“What are you playing at, Ms. Groves?” He asked, as if out of patience and the hacker could see the struggle unfolding in the Decima agent’s expression as he fought to determine at what point he’d lost control of the conversation.

 

“I’m saying get ready because we have two gods, one world, and too many monsters,” Root continued in a low whisper, locking gazes with Lambert. “And Ragnarok is coming.”

 

 

O8O8O8O8O

 

**ii. in zugzwang**

 

“Ms. Shaw, I truly don’t believe Ms. Groves would condone this course of action given what she just sacrificed for your well-being,” Harold said, turning to watch Shaw as she moved around him, picking up guns, loaded magazines, and assorted grenades and stuffing them into a black duffle bag.

 

Shaw dropped the black duffle bag down onto the concrete with a heavy metal clang that roused Bear from his dog bed as John stood stoically somewhere over their shoulders like an attentive shadow. Sameen stopped what she was doing and pressed her hands against the flat surface of Harold’s desk as if needing something to anchor her through the storm of largely rage fuelled emotions she was having.

 

“I didn’t ask her to do anything for me, Harold,” she bit out as if it were something that was painful for her to say.

 

“We never ask our loved ones to make these sorts of sacrifices on our behalves, Ms. Shaw and yet they do so anyway because they love us.”

 

Harold paused.

 

He realized—grudgingly—that the argument he was making to Sameen was the exact opposite of the one he’d made to Root earlier, instead taking pains to defend the hacker’s ill-advised plan. Why he’d had this sudden shift in opinion, Harold wasn’t sure.

 

When they’d arrived at the parking garage to find Ms. Shaw alive and well, free of her bonds and beating her would-be captors senseless, it had filled them all with a familiar sense of hope. Not only had Sameen survived the shootout at the stock exchange like Root was sure she had, but she had returned to them as formidable as ever. However, in the wake of Shaw’s return, Harold felt one emotion more keenly than the rest.

 

Guilt.

 

He felt guilty in large part because he and John had given up on her. Sameen understood their reasons or at  least if she didn’t, she wasn’t being blatant about it, but that didn’t excuse the fact that they were in the situation they were in because Root had been forced to find a way to get Shaw back without their aid.

 

For her part, Sameen stared at Harold for a moment like he had grown a second head. Harold had said the words “love” and “Ms. Shaw” in a sentence making the implication that Root was in love with her and vice versa. Sameen knew Root had always been obsessed with her—she wasn’t blind—but love was a strong word and acknowledging it would change things.

 

Root’s feelings for Sameen had always been the invisible pink elephant in the room their entire team had tip-toed around since Root had joined them and it had become immediately obvious that the hacker’s interest in Shaw went beyond just having someone to shoot the people who were trying to kill her in a firefight. Even Lionel had noticed the lingering looks of adoring eyes and the lustful leers directed Shaw’s way when she pretended not to be paying attention.

 

And even though it had taken her a while, Sameen could admit that she felt something in all those moments when Root couldn’t keep her eyes or her hands to herself, but no way in hell was it love. Sameen wasn’t even sure how she’d gotten herself into this mess. One morning she’d opened her eyes and the realization like all of the usual sensations of waking up, had washed over her and she knew she’d already fallen way too deep into this unnamed thing she had with Root to dig herself out again.

 

If Shaw was being completely honest, it had all probably started out by following her instincts.

 

As a soldier, it made sense for her to follow the orders of the person who had the answers, the person who could get them all into and out of a dangerous situation alive and from the time she’d tased Sameen in her own bed and kidnapped her for a mission, that person had always been Root. As the Machine’s analogue interface, Root had answers that not even Harold was privy to and she could do things that no one else could, but at some unforeseen point Shaw’s attachment to Root had transformed from just a good survival move into something different.

 

The feelings the tall brunette now aroused in Sameen were possessive, confusing, and most disturbing of all, they were strong. Shaw had always been good at keeping what little emotions she felt on the back burner, to simmer and eventually boil off, but the things Root made Shaw feel were harder to compartmentalize.

 

The anger and annoyance had always been easy. Those were the most commonplace things Sameen was used to feeling on a daily basis and the most comfortable for her to deal with, but the protective, clingy, caring sorts of feelings that Root inspired in her, those were another story entirely. They made Shaw want to either slink away into the shadows and take off or fight back against whatever unseen force that was trying to control her.

 

Right now, both instincts were yanking Sameen in opposite directions like an unsuccessful game of tug of war and she was beginning to resent the internal pressure.

 

 _Damn you, Root_ , Shaw thought, curling her fingers into fists and feeling her knuckles drag against the hard wooden surface of the desk,  _why couldn’t you have just kept yourself safe and let me go to hell the way I wanted to?_

 

“She got herself into this mess,” Sameen started again, lifting the duffle up onto the desktop and double checking to make sure she had everything she might need. “I’m going to get her out of it and then I’m going to kick her ass.”

 

Harold shook his head in frustration and moved to stand in Shaw’s way when she turned in the direction of the stairwell.

 

“We will be able to get Root back, Ms. Shaw, but only by working together,” Harold said, hoping his voice sounded sure, not empty or placating.

 

“Harold,” Sameen said, in a low warning tone. “Move.”

 

“There’s strength in numbers, Shaw.” John piped up. They were the first words he’d said since they’d returned to their underground hideout with Shaw pacing back and forth and Harold flinching every time she slammed a drawer or shoved a loaded magazine into a gun harder than she had to, “Root has a better chance of surviving if we all go.”

 

“But not before we formulate a plan of attack,” Harold added quickly, needing to make sure they were all on the same page.

 

Sameen stared at him again, an unreadable expression on her face before finally taking a deep breath and letting it out in a frustrated rush.

 

“Well, chop, chop then, Harold because we don’t have much time,” she said, moving the duffle bag back to the floor so Harold could pull out his laptop and do what he was good at.

 

O8O8O8O8O

 

**iii. en passant**

_16 hours later…_

“I never thought I’d say this but I think Coca Puffs is a keeper,” Lionel commented through a mouth full of pork gyro, earning a death glare from Shaw in the process. “What? She gave herself up for you.”

 

“Yeah, and right now we’re supposed to be out there looking for her and instead I’m stuck in this hellhole watching one pig scarf down another. It’s like watching Animal Planet,” Shaw complained, pacing back and forth and not feeling any better for it.

 

They’d all spent the night cramped down in that subway, taking naps in shifts on the uncomfortable benches through the early hours, all except for Shaw. She’d been too wired to get any sleep. Then Lionel had gone out to a 24hr Mediterranean diner he knew about and got them all breakfast, but Shaw found that she was too restless to eat, which was a first for her.

 

Fusco looked down at the wax paper sleeve he was holding and the pita stuffed with onions, tomatoes, rotisserie pork, and French fries and then back up into Shaw’s deadly eyes. Under normal circumstances, Shaw was someone you got out of the way of or wore a cup around just in case she got antsy to beat someone up, but there was an undercurrent running through her today that was somehow more potentially life threatening than usual.

 

Lionel seemed to be the only one of them who was bothered by it. John had spent the two hours since he’d woken up methodically cleaning all of his guns and loading the ones he intended to take with him and Harold was at one of his many computers typing furiously, only getting up occasionally to get a book or map from a shelf in the subway car.

 

“Hey Glasses, when are we getting outta here?” Fusco said, returning Shaw’s glare, “can’t say I care much for the company.”

 

“In a moment, Detective,” Harold placated from the safety of his computer chair. “Perhaps the wait would be easier if you didn’t antagonize, Ms. Shaw so.”

 

“She’s always the one who starts it—hey!” Lionel yelped as his food was taken away from him.

 

Shaw snatched the gyro out of his hand and immediately took a large bite out of it. The greasy goodness of slow roasted meat that usually had the power to take the edge off of a bad day, did nothing to reduce Sameen’s uneasiness as she chewed, swallowed, and tossed the gyro into the nearest trashcan aggressively as if it had somehow done something to offend her.

 

“Oh now I know you ain’t you.” Lionel observed, always willing to push his luck, “you just threw away food  _willingly_.”

 

“How much longer, Harold?” Shaw asked, ignoring Fusco and standing behind the other man so she could see what progress he was making on the screen.

 

“Patience, Ms. Shaw, and might I say that standing over my shoulder won’t necessarily make me work any faster.”

 

Shaw looked at him as Harold continued to type fast and furious, different screens popping up and minimizing and lines of code running through little black windows. She didn’t have the slightest comprehension of anything he was doing and she didn’t care to know. She could do nerd up to a point when she had to, but right now Shaw was too agitated to think of anything much outside of getting back on the streets and getting her infuriating hacker back.

 

“This is stupid. All of this waiting around is stupid. We should have been gone hours ago. They already could have taken her across state lines or out of the country or killed her even,” Sameen fumed, saying the last part reluctantly as if not wanting to admit that it might be true.

 

“If she’s important enough that they were willing to trade for her, I don’t think they would have risked killing her yet, Shaw,” John said, calmly reassembling a Beretta ARX-160 assault rifle as he spoke. “They wanted her for something, something specific and they’ll keep her alive until they get it.”

 

Shaw looked at John for a moment, wheels and gears spinning behind those large dark eyes.Then she moved back over to her collected stash of weapons and pulled out a Browning PRO-9 pistol, checking to make sure the safety was on and shoving it into the pocket of her wool coat. She pulled a couple of loaded magazines from the duffle and stuffed them into her other pocket, making a b-line for the stairs.

 

“Hey, where are you going?” Lionel piped up.

 

Harold turned around abruptly and caught a glimpse of Shaw’s back as she jogged up the stairs, too far away for him to stop her.   

 

“To see a friend about her analogue interface,” Sameen offered, not bothering to slow down for their objections until she was finally topside and loose out into the familiar hustle and bustle of the city.

O8O8O8O8O

 

_1 hour later…_

 

Shaw’s father had been stationed for a year in West Berlin before the wall had come down and they’d lived then in an apartment in Neukölln on the American side of the city.

 

Sameen hadn’t been old at the time, four, maybe five, and yet she still retained vivid memories of the place like how her father would take her for walks on Saturdays down the busy KMS and they’d stop off for gözleme filled with minced lamb and spinach before stopping at a local marketplace to pick up the groceries her mother would need to make dinner that night or taking the U-Bahn to visit some museum in Charlottenburg Sameen’s mother was sure would bring more culture into her unruly daughter’s life. Or the baseball games her father would take her too at the V. J. Keefe Memorial Stadium while he was stationed at Camp Bullis in Texas and all of those awkward quiet dinners she’d had with her mother after he’d died…

 

Small, uncalled for memories like those raced to the forefront of her mind as Sameen Shaw marched down block after block of New York streets. She had to be getting close to the end of the damn shadow map by now, but the trek seemed longer somehow than it had the many times Shaw had made it before. Maybe it was the fact that she was finding it hard to focus on anything aside from locating a traffic camera or perhaps it was the smell of freshly made kenafeh wafting out of the Lebanese café she’d just walked passed that was making her feel equal parts desperate and conflicted.

 

 _Damn you, Root,_ Shaw thought for the hundredth time since she’d been rescued the day before.

 

It was morning still, but there was no sun, just a constant winter chill and an unchanging grey sky overhead. Everything was all too ordinary. There was still traffic in the streets and horns being honked by impatient drivers and people walking briskly about like they had more important things to do than anyone else and the smells of sticky buns being made in a mom and pop bakery nearby and strong coffee billowing from the closest Starbucks. Everyone was just going about their day to day lives. Nothing for any of them had changed, but the world had been turned upside down for Sameen and she was going to pay it back in kind if it was the last thing she did.

 

Rounding a corner, Shaw spotted a piece of the puzzle she needed to solve and moved quickly.  

 

“What the hell lady?!” the small time thief yelled as if yelling at all would make a difference in what she was going to do to him, “you crazy or something?!”

 

“Just keep moving and keep quiet unless you want to be walking with a permanent limp for the rest of your life,” Shaw said, manhandling him down the street with the gun in her pocket pressed into his lower back.

 

The irate man had been thumbing through a woman’s purse he’d stolen in a side alleyway. Jerk didn’t even have the common sense to take his spoils away from prying eyes before looking to see what he’d taken and that’s when Sameen decided that he was just stupid enough and greedy enough to fill the open role in her plan.

 

They continued walking closely for about another half block when out of the corner of her eyes, Sameen saw it, a surveillance camera tacked to the wall of a convenience store surveying everything happening on the small stretch of sidewalk in front of the shop and a small corner of the alleyway beside. She wasted no time pushing the man roughly into the alleyway and pulling out her gun and placing it again his temple. As he sputtered and cowered, she looked up into the camera lens through a determined haze.

 

“Look, I know you don’t like loss of life no matter how scummy it is,” she said, “but either you tell me where Root is or I blow his brains all over this wall.”

 

Threats had gotten Sameen a long way in life so far, but this time the little red light by the lens just blinked back.

 

“I mean it. I will shoot him,” Shaw snarled, pressing the muzzle of the gun harder into the man’s skull to prove her point. “He’s just a common criminal. His life doesn’t matter to me, but it does to you and I will end him if you don’t tell me where the one person I care about is right now.”

 

Seconds ticked by and still nothing. Shaw cocked the hammer back on the gun and resituated her finger over the trigger. Slowly, she looked away from the camera towards the man in her hold. He was no taller than her and in his near death panic, he looked so much like every other person Sameen had shot. Shooting the perps was the easy part, watching the life leave their eyes wasn’t always.

 

It was hardest when they were physically close to her for the reason that Shaw could see into their eyes, watching their pathetic humanity start to bleed out of them before the bullet had even left the chamber of her gun. They weren’t criminals then or international terrorists or relevant threats—they were just people, sacks filled with meat and bones and blood and the insane need to live no matter what consequences that would portend for countless other lives if the people she’d been sent to kill for the good of thousands were allowed to continue drawing breath.

 

But Sameen did what was necessary and she did it damn well.

 

This mark—like all of the other kills Sameen had made—was just something she had to do for the greater good. This wasn’t just for her.

 

  _It’s not_ , Sameen insisted vehemently to herself,  _it’s for all of the lives we’ll save when we have Root back. It’s about putting Samaritan back in the box or nuking it altogether. We can’t do that without Root. She’s necessary to the mission. She’s necessary for me…damn you, Root._

Shaw tightened her fingers around the grip of her gun, allowing her trigger finger to tense up slightly as well.

 

Out of nowhere, a jumbled image popped into Sameen’s mind of the day her father had died: the way his arm had lashed out to keep her pinned to her seat as the car swerved viciously and the way his grip hadn’t loosed, not even when they’d flipped over and stopped moving. She remembered opening her eyes and reaching out to touch his face, pale, head bowed, eyes closed, and skin still warm to the touch even though she couldn’t feel him breathing anymore and then the memory shifted. The image changed and suddenly it wasn’t her father beside her with his heart beating its last, it was Root and like her father, the hacker wasn’t moving or breathing. She was pale and bloody and there was nothing Shaw could do to pull back time and make Root safe and okay again just like there was nothing she could have done to save her dad.  

“Last chance, robot.” Sameen said, her voice sounding more guttural and fractured than she would have liked as she looked back up at the camera.

 

Shaw sighed at the silence and grabbed the collar of the man’s coat gruffly in her other hand. Looking at him again, she took a step back and aimed. The phone in Shaw’s pocket buzzed then.

 

“About damn time,” Sameen grunted.

 

Without taking her eyes off of the man, she flipped the safety back on and smashed the butt of the gun against the base of the man’s skull. He’d have one hell of a headache, but he’d live. With both of her hands free again, Sameen reached into her inner coat pocket and pulled out the phone. She’d received a text without a sender, but the address that blinked back at her was clear.

 

_Richmond Terrace & DeHart Avenue, Staten Island  _

 

“Thank you,” Sameen said, making her way back towards the subway station in double time. “Hang on, Root. I’m coming for you.”


	2. Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've spent over a year trying to figure out how to end this only to come to the conclusion that it's going to have three parts because I can't fit it into two. Not satisfyingly at least. Sorry for taking as long as I have to update this, but life happens and I haven't been able to escape it as well as I would like. An end is in sight for this story and believe me when I say, they will be reunited. They just have to get through the chess game in the middle first.

 i.  **zwischenzug**

 

Root came back to consciousness slowly.

 

This room was darker than the last one she remembered waking up in at first and she wasn’t sitting in a chair anymore, but standing with both feet flat on the floor and both of her wrists zip tied to a metal pipe running along the wall behind her. Root’s mouth felt dry and her skin was clammy and her mind felt muddled. The final clue her body gave her was that she had no memory of moving from one place to the other so she had to have been drugged again and moved while unconscious to wherever the hell she was now.

 

As far as Root could tell, the drugging and the moving was a pattern her captors were using to disorient her and keep her team members from locating her and so far it was working. There was a loud metal creaking sound and the room became suddenly bright as the fluorescent overhead lights were switched on. A plastic chair was placed in the center of the room by a lackey in a lab coat and Martine sat down.

 

The blonde’s expression was indifferent as always and she was clad in a black t-shirt and pants making her look every ounce as pallid as she actually was.  Her russet eyes regarded Root coolly in silence for what felt like a long time, then finally the corners of the blonde’s mouth curled up into a half smile that put every nerve ending Root had on edge. 

 

“How are you enjoying your stay with us?” Martine asked, the tone of her voice dripping with humor at her rival’s current predicament.

 

For the first time that day, Root was glad for the drugs in her system. Everything about the mocking blonde made Root bristle, but the xylazine still running through her veins helped to tempter her involuntary reactions and mute them down to subtle twitches of surface muscles that could be passed off as side effects from the horse tranquilizers themselves and not marks of the hacker’s weakness.

 

The observant blonde though, noticed each minute response and catalogued it, filing it away for later.

 

After a short pause where the only sounds to be heard in the room were Root’s uneven breaths echoing off of the concrete walls, Martine continued.

 

“When I was an interrogator in AIVD we were expected to observe a certain modicum of civility towards our prisoners until they were sentenced even if we had proven they were guilty of terrible crimes. I never understood the reasoning behind it, but Samaritan has less unrealistic expectations and I find that I prefer the freedom to do anything I want to do to you. You’re Greer’s white whale, you know. He’s been following your interferences in our affairs with enthusiasm ever since you nearly managed to corner him in the New York subway. Fortunately for me, Samaritan’s view of you is more…ambivalent.”

 

Root took a deep breath and let it out slowly, attempting to stop the quaking beginning in her muscles. Part of her wanted to snarl at the blonde to shut up because everything about her was unsettling to Root—most of all the grating of Martine’s arrogant voice—and still part of her wanted to find some way to escape her bonds and reach out and punch Martine and keep punching and hurting her until she was a bloody mess on the floor for what she’d done to Sameen. But a still larger part of Root was cautious—weary and dreading the real reason for the Decima agent’s presence.

 

An image flashed in Root’s mind then of Shaw struggling against her captors as she was dragged away and tied to a support beam and the fire in her ebony gaze as she fought, locking eyes with Root and the expression on her face changing as she realized that Root wasn’t coming to help her because Root was a prisoner now, that she’d made a choice that would separate them forever. Root didn’t regret it though. She’d do it again. If given the choice of having Sameen back with the team safe and sound or being in constant fear of not knowing if she was alive or dead, the brunette knew which option she’d choose.

 

“If you’re here to kill me, just get it over with,” Root said, her voice coming out brittle and harsh.

 

The blonde’s smile widened slightly, her eyes never leaving the hacker’s challenging brown gaze.

 

The room was quiet again save for Root’s breathing. She felt like there was a fire racing beneath her skin and it was making sweat bubble up through her pores and her muscles ache as if they’d been overused while her heart thumped against her ribcage to an erratic rhythm that didn’t match any song her body had ever made. A song of desperation and pain and Martine was definitely enjoying the show.

 

“Have you ever heard the story of the turtle and the scorpion?” the blonde continued, appreciating the way the hacker’s form tensed up as the sound of her voice once again filled the space around them. “It’s a fable I remember being taught in primary school. I can only really recall the important points. A scorpion asks a turtle to help him cross a river. The turtle knows the scorpion is dangerous and might sting him, but he thinks the scorpion won’t hurt him because he’s giving the scorpion what he wants. So the turtle carries the scorpion across the river. Halfway to the opposite bank, the scorpion stings the turtle. Just before they drown, the turtle asks the scorpion why he would betray them both knowing that he would die in the process and the scorpion responds by saying, ‘because it is in my nature and I cannot help being anything other than what I am.’ ” 

 

A wave of nausea suddenly overcame Root and she slumped against her restraints, the zip ties cutting into her wrists and giving her something to focus on other than the need to retch as the world around her began to spin.

 

“As fun as hearing you butcher a children’s story is, I haven’t underestimated your boss’s nature,” Root panted out when the feeling had passed.

 

“It isn’t Samaritan’s nature that concerns me,” the blonde’s voice rasped beside Root’s good ear. “It’s yours.”

 

The hacker startled, drawing in a sharp breath. At some point Martine had gotten up from the chair and Root had been too swept up in her own body’s private rebellion to notice. Now she was caught between the wall at her back and Martine hovering uncomfortably close to her front.

Martine pulled back a little so that they were face to face. Root swallowed, feeling a swell of fear spiking up in her chest like an unfortunate reminder of her humanity and she viciously pushed it down.

 

Root’s stomach rolled as she realized what this was. Lambert had been her welcoming committee, Samaritan’s first line of defense. If she’d defected and pledged herself to the evil AI, he probably would have released her to fight at Samaritan’s behest, but Root hadn’t given in.

 

Instead, she’d maintained her allegiance to the Machine and her ragtag family of misfits so Samaritan had reacted accordingly and had sent in Martine to punish, desolate, maybe even kill her. Root blinked and searched blindly around for a camera. Her eyes finally locked onto one in the far corner, a green light blinking from the bottom of the protective casing. In her drugged state, it seemed like the flashing light was alternating on and off at odd intervals. A code maybe? It was code, a code Root was familiar with. Morse code…but why?

 

If She had wanted to talk to Root she knew how to contact her…Wait. Root shifted her head to the side and pressed the right side of her head against the cold concrete. She gasped at the sharp sting of red hot agony that radiated outward from the area around her ear all along her face and neck. Root had been so out of it from the drugs that she hadn’t even been able to feel the uncomfortable twinge that radiated outward from a newly made cut behind her ear.

 

Her implant. It was gone.

 

Of course Decima would have had it removed. Tied up or no, so long as Root had a god whispering life or at the very least morale saving mantras in her ear, she’d be in control of whatever situation they placed her in, but not anymore. Now Root felt sick and sore and emotionally and physically drained and alone. She just wanted to give up—to fall down and not get back up again. Without the Machine what was she? Just a bitter woman without a purpose now at the mercy of her enemies and it was no one’s fault but her own. She didn’t even have Shaw’s unwavering strength anymore to hold her up and that was her fault too.

 

 _Sameen_ , Root thought, struggling to keep tears out of her eyes as she felt herself begin to break on the inside, _I’m so sorry_.

 

The brunette looked back up at the camera on the wall, her gaze pleading. The blinking continued conveying its measured message. It took Root only moments to decipher what She was saying, but the joy at having the Machine talking to her again was overshadowed by the forbidding quality of her words.

 

_Brace yourself._

 

A subtle clicking sound interrupted her ruminations as a plastic cap was removed from an unlabeled bottle and it was then that Root realized that Martine had moved away from her and was wearing protective rubber gloves. Where she’d gotten them or when she’d put them on, Root wasn’t sure, but neither move could bode well for the situation the tall brunette currently found herself in. Martine raised the plunger on a plastic syringe, drawing clear liquid up into the barrel.

 

There was no needle at the end though and Root found herself wondering what the psychotic blonde was planning.

 

“What’s that?” Root asked, not expecting to get an answer.

 

“Just a way to pass the time,” Martine replied vaguely.

 

The Decima agent stepped up beside her again and held the syringe so that it hung ominously over the patch of skin where Root’s collarbone met her shoulder and waited.

 

“Now,” Martine said, her smirk full-blown and her pupils dilated. “Scream for me.”

 

Root’s brow furrowed in confusion until she watched the blonde’s gloved thumb push the plunger on the syringe down only slightly. The clear liquid dribbled down onto Root’s skin and her entire consciousness exploded onto a plane of mindless misery.

 

 

O8O8O8O8O

 ii.  **losing a tempo**

Shaw didn’t bother going back to the subway. Instead, John had received a brisk text message with the address and a gruff command to bring the weapons Sameen had packed when they met her there.

 

Shaw had taken a cab and paid the driver forty dollars extra to forget that he ever saw her. She only had her one handgun and about four loaded magazines of ammunition, but what Sameen did have in abundance was a whole lot of rage.

 

“Glad you waited for me,” John said, dropping the duffle bag of weapons at their feet with a clang.

 

“You’re lucky you got here before I went in without you,” Shaw replied, stooping to pull a Glock 17M from the bag, then paused, and grabbed a Walther P99 as well and stuffed them both into the waistband of her pants.

 

Root would need a weapon or two after they got her out of this hellhole after all and Shaw wasn’t about to let her down, not now, not in any way. Very few people in Sameen’s life had garnered her full, undiluted respect. John and Harold had and in time and so had Root. In trading herself to Samaritan for Shaw, the hacker’s actions roared in her mind louder than all of the playfully heated innuendos and unwarranted touches that had become the standard fare of their time together. Root loved her and—whether or not Sameen would or ever could return it—she wasn’t going to let Root’s sacrifice for her go. She was going to get Root back and bring her home with them where she belonged.

 

“Where’s Fusco?” Sameen asked, but before John could answer the man in question came into sight behind him.

 

“We gonna go get your girl or what?” he asked impatiently.

 

Shaw opened her mouth to say that Root wasn’t her anything, but realizing they didn’t have time for the argument that would probably follow, she chose to roll her eyes instead. The abandoned warehouse was about as desolate and unpopulated as a condemned building would be expected to be and for some reason it filled Sameen with dread. Every location Decima commandeered had guards patrolling the perimeter. The facilities she’d been held at had been well manned at all times, but this place…there was no sign of anyone else but them. 

 

But the Machine had told her Root was here and the Machine didn’t lie so she had to be.

 

“Yeah,” Shaw said, hefting the duffle back over her shoulder and pulling the Browning PRO-9 out of her pocket with her free hand. “Let’s go.”

 

They entered through a side entrance and to Sameen’s surprise, they met resistance just only a few fee down a long hallway.

 

“Stop!” One of the guards shouted when he saw them.

 

Shaw’s response was to shoot both of his knees out from under him.

 

There were two guards at the entrance of every room in the long corridor, about fifteen or sixteen in all. The first two were easy. A grenade took out about seven more and between them Sameen, John, and Lionel were able to neutralize the rest. Amid the consistent groaning of wounded bodies, the trio continued down a stairwell into a large open space that had probably once been a factory floor.

 

There were no lights, only the glow of the sun slipping through the cracks in the jaggedly broken multi-pane industrial windows. The floor was littered with assorted detritus: pieces of dirtied paper, rusted chunks of metal, decaying fallen leaves, broken bricks, and pieces of curled wire. There was a cracked blue plastic chair sitting in the center of the room, brown with dust and years of disuse.

 

“Is this it?” Fusco asked, his disbelieving voice echoing off of walls and support beams that hadn’t seen regular human maintenance in thirty years or so. “Where’s Banana Nut Crunch?”

 

Sameen looked around them, taking in their surroundings and looking for any evidence in the debris that Root might once have been here, but John found what she was looking for before she did.

 

“Shaw, look at this.”

 

John was standing next to the chair, staring down at something on the seat. Sameen moved over towards him and as she moved closer, she immediately recognized what he was referring to.  Laying among the dirt and a small pool of blood of its own was the round antenna transmitter of a specially made cochlear implant. Sameen bent as if to touch it, but at the last minute she let her fingers drop away and just stared at it as if looking at it would make it somehow not be real.

 

“She was here,” John theorized. “Maybe this was where they brought her initially, but she’s been moved. The guards left behind were decoys and the Machine must have thought it was tracking Root when really it was tracking the implant instead.”

 

“The who?” Lionel asked, but he dropped it when he didn’t get an answer. “So we came all the way here for a dead end?”

 

“Shaw?”

 

John turned around, but it was just him and Lionel on the main factory floor now.

 

“Where’d she go?” Lionel asked.

 

The sound of gunshots coming from upstairs punctuated the silence.

 

“Looks like she’s made plans with some of our new friends. Come on,”

 

They climbed the stairs and the first thing they saw was Sameen. She’d transferred her gun to her left hand and was kneeling over one of the guards they’d kneecapped earlier and punching him across the face repeatedly until the man was beginning to lose consciousness and Sameen’s knuckles were raw and bleeding.

 

“Shaw,” John warned, a subtle hint of anxiety to his voice.

 

“Tell me where she is!” Shaw demanded shortly, then when the man didn’t answer her she stared up at the ceiling. “Why the hell would you bring us here if Root wasn’t even here in the first place?!”

 

One of the injured men around her reached out for the weapon that had slid across the floor when he was shot. Sameen saw him move out of the corner of her eye and watched impassively as his head exploded in a splatter of red as she fired first one then two bullets into his skull. The guards on the ground closest to him, now covered in gore, shouted and pleaded for their lives, but Sameen didn’t register the words. There was blood on her knuckles and on her gun and the pain from the torn skin of her fingers wasn’t distracting her anymore. She’d reached the end of her rope…and Root wasn’t there to hold her back or pull her forward.

 

Her phone buzzed from a pocket inside her jacket and deft fingers fished it out automatically.

 

_She has been moved…too hard to see where…_

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Shaw growled under her breath just as another text flashed across her screen.

 

_They are torturing her…please hurry._

Shaw flexed her jaw and tried to think of the facilities she’d been held at during her time in captivity. They’d all looked the same, concrete walls and floors, limited entrances, and no windows. They’d moved her from place to place, but she had always been drugged first so she never remembered the journey to each new prison or its location. Shaw swallowed down the renewed feelings of frustration and fear, staring back down at the now blank screen of her iphone.

 

“Can you keep her alive until we find her? Find some way to stall them?”

 

There was a hesitation as if the Machine was reluctant to comply to a promise that couldn’t be kept. The Machine was the brain of their operation, but the members of their team were her arms and legs and if Root was anything, she was her heart. Harold had taught the Machine to never place more importance on one life than on another. It was a direct lesson from her creator and not part of her core programming, but still the Machine headed it as if it was part of that precious moral code that Harold had given her to make her unique among her kind. Differentiating between one life and another—attributing value to one above the rest—was a human shortcoming.

 

Wars had been fought since before men and women could even stand fully upright to satisfy individual whims. Good things too came out of human selfishness: ingenuity, innovation, love…the beautiful dichotomy of their natures allowed human beings to do great things and commit vile acts in the same breath.

 

Humans were incredible, easily changeable disasters that courted death in causeways and back alleys. They scanned for diseases, but didn’t change their lifestyles to prevent them, and polluted the world they depended upon for survival and they would go to war in the name of protecting a peace that no longer existed. Their decision making skills were questionable at best and yet it was the beating heart of their illogical desires that drove the world, and by extension, the Machine itself.

 

Another text flashed across Shaw’s screen.

 

_I will try. Analogue interface is located at Red Hook Grain Terminal. Twenty Minutes._

 

“Let’s go,” Shaw said, shoving her phone back into her jacket pocket, “we have a lot of ground to cover and not a lot of time.”

 

“What did the Machine say?” John asked, falling in behind her and matching the agitated pace Sameen set on her way out of the building.

 

“She’s in Brooklyn. We need to be there in twenty.” Shaw said.

 

“So we need to be on the other side of the city in twenty minutes,” John summarized.

 

“With midday traffic, good luck with that,” Fusco huffed, struggling to keep up and almost tripping when Shaw turned to glare at him.

 

“Is the Machine sure she’s there this time?” John asked.

 

“Only one way to find out.”

 

“I’ll drive,” Fusco volunteered.

 

“Fat chance,” Shaw amended, wrenching the driver’s side door open angrily before Lionel reached the handle, “you’re in back, Reese is shotgun.”

 

Three car doors slammed. Shaw shoved the key into the ignition, the engine turned over, and they sped back into traffic in a fury of spinning wheels and honking horns.

**Author's Note:**

> TBC...


End file.
